In recent years, a document management system using an Internet technique has been spread. In the document management system, the user can access a Web opened by a server computer from a client computer through the Internet, select a document on the Web, display it to display means, and browse an image. Moreover, the user can also freely print the browsed image by the client computer. Such an operation results in invasion of a copyright of contents and becomes a problem, particularly, in toll contents. To avoid such a problem, a technique having a purpose of restricting the printing of the contents on the client computer side has been proposed (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-102695).
According to the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-102695, first, from printer information corresponding to a user ID peculiar to each user, a printer driver which coincides with the printer information is extracted. Print data of detailed information of headline items is formed by using the printer driver and transmitted to a client computer. By using such a method, contents is provided only to the user whom browsing use has been permitted.
In recent years, use of techniques such as cloud computing system and SaaS (Software as a Service) has been started. There is such a demand that owing to those techniques, application programs are installed to a server computer on the Internet side and the number of application programs which are installed to the client computer side is reduced as much as possible.
According to the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-102695, it is an object to suppress the printing which is executed by the user and user information and printer information are managed as profile information in a one-to-one correspondence manner. Therefore, when the user tries to print from another client computer, if a type of such a client computer differs, there is a fear of occurrence of such an inconvenience that the printing cannot be normally performed or the like. As for a connection of the client computer to the Internet, a firewall is not presumed. That is, in a network environment which is protected by the firewall, direct communication from the server computer to the printer is undesirable from a viewpoint of security and is difficult. It is, therefore, difficult that an execution result of the printing is confirmed from the server computer to the printer beyond the firewall. It is necessary to install a driver of an image forming apparatus to the client computer side. Therefore, the client computer in which many application programs have inherently been installed is further burdened.